INTERNAL PRESSURE is a major site specific solo exhibition by established Newcastle based artist Braddon Snape and the culmination of Snape’s PhD research over the past four years.

Working primarily with sculpture and installation including large scale public works, for the past 25 years, established Newcastle based artist Braddon Snape has been honing his refined aesthetic and becoming an expert craftsperson in whichever materials he chooses to employ for a body of work, while continuing to push the physical and conceptual boundaries of his practice.

Snape’s current practice has focused on a dangerously exciting and new method of inflating steel to create three dimensional forms. This performative process which Snape describes as “Action Sculpture”, has given his work a renewed freedom and reveals a delicate dialogue between control and chance.

Through his PhD research and the resulting “Action Sculptures”, Snape aims to acknowledge the impact that specific environmental factors including spatial, psychological, historical and political factors, have on works when conceived for a specific site and /or context. Accordingly, the works in INTERNAL PRESSURE are site specific, responding directly to the physical, psychological and historical context of The Lock-Up’s spaces and acknowledging the brutality of the site and it’s not so distant history.

Snape’s unique method of inflating steel signifies an act of force, of pressure - of the steel yielding to forces. Restrained by strapping and steel, the inflated steel forms are buckled over, beaten, wedged, pressed, compressed and jammed into the loaded spaces of The Lock-Up. Bodies of stored energy captured in a contorted moment, these manifestations of energy will be palpable and visceral when encountered in The Lock-Up’s spaces.

ABOUT BRADDON SNAPE

Braddon Snape is an established Newcastle based artist whose primarily three-dimensional practice appears in galleries, and in the public domain as large-scale public artworks, both in Australia and abroad.

Over the past 25 years Snape has developed a practice that encompasses sculpture and installation in a diverse range of media, earning a reputation for conceptually rich works revealed through a minimal aesthetic and an astute understanding and sensitivity to materials. Underpinned by a poetic sensibility, Snape’s abstract works often reference place, history, human endeavor and the natural world.

Highlights of Braddon’s career to date include participation in Sculpture by the Sea seven times, a finalist in the McClelland Sculpture Survey and Award and the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize; ISF Korea; Materiality Performed, Maitland RegionAart Gallery; Hunter Red – Corpus, Newcastle Art Gallery and numerous significant Public Art commissions that demonstrate a thorough understanding of materiality and site. Public art commissions include Landcom Vantage, Port Stephens; The SubWharfyen, Sydney Wharf, Pyrmont and most recently Clouds Gathering, a large Public Art Installation for Maitland City Council.

Braddon’s work is held in national and international collections including Crown Hatai, Seoul, Korea; Bretton Hall, College of Arts, University of Leeds, UK; Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, Sydney; Newcastle Art Gallery; Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery; Maitland Regional Gallery; Port Stephens Council; and The University of Newcastle; and in private collections in Australia, Great Britain, China and USA.

Snape currently lectures in Sculpture at The University of Newcastle and is the Director of the Newcastle artist studio and gallery initiative The Creator Incubator.

IMAGE: Braddon Snape Materiality Performed, The Lock-Up. Inflation performance as part of Next to Nothing: Art as Performance Symposium 2015. Image courtesy the artist.